


Extra Chips - Clay of Many Colors

by fresne



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-09
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2019-01-31 04:14:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 15,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12674208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: Looking for hope. Gods. Goddesses. People.





	1. Green - In Search of Her Kore

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Clay of Many Colors - Add Water](https://archiveofourown.org/works/623740) by [fresne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne). 



> After the 2016 Presidential election, I wanted to wrap my arms around the world. That's not practical, but it did make me think about a story I wrote years ago for a friend - "Clay of Many Colors - Add Water". I decided to expand on that and put it out there. These stories are the ones that I liked, but didn't quite work for the overall flow of stories for various reasons.
> 
> Curious about the rest, well read the linked original or check out my profile.

Demeter did all that she could. She left Zeus when he ate Metis. All the arguments. All the rage. Of all of them, only Zeus had been spared. Zeus hadn't been eaten. 

The feeling of father's teeth scraping Demeter's legs as she went down. Zeus had killed father, who had killed his father. He'd eaten a woman. A wife. A cousin. To stop the cycle. So he wouldn't be killed in turn by the child Metis carried.

Stop the cycle. 

Three pomegranate seeds and that cycle would have been stopped.

Demeter left.

She left Zeus.

She left Olympus.

She left all of them.

She made a life for herself and her child in nature. She took up nature as her dominion. 

A warning every morning to her little girl. "Kore, don't talk to strangers." "You are target." "Be careful." "Stay in open view of the crowd at all times." "They will dry to devour you."

Summer was full of all forms of hard warnings.

That sudden last day of the eternal summer that was. 

"Kore's been taken. She's gone." 

Demeter didn't know who spoke. She didn't care. She scattered the birds to the four winds. Suddenly cold winds. "Find her. Find my Kore." She scattered the deer. She scattered the wolves. She scattered the cattle. She scattered the sheep. She scattered. "Find her."

She crossed the lands. Set aside glory and put on terror. 

She went to Olympus. She went to see Zeus, brother. Husband. Father of her child if he cared. She'd left and there had been no other word.

Hera blocked the way. Sister. Enemy. Rival. Fellow prisoner their father's stomach. 

"Tell Zeus our daughter is missing. Tell him."

"He knows." Hera reached out to put a hand on Demeter's wrist, but Demeter was nature. She was swift as the sparrow. She pulled away.

Every moment talking was a moment not looking. 

She crossed rivers. They dried up at her steps. Rich fields withered. Grapes dried into raisins on the vine. Roots twisted in the soil. Unrooted. The world was rootless.

Finally, she thought to look at the sky. Thought to ask Apollo. Persephone's half brother. The sun had been shining when Kore had been taken. Not a cloud in the sky. 

He told her what he'd seen.

Demeter stared at Apollo. His blazing chariot hardly registered in her eyes. His words sank into her. They sank into the earth of her.

Her Kore, her little girl, her heart's delight, her Springtime had been taken from her care by her brother, Hades. Into the land of the Dead. Into the under earth. 

She'd shared an aeon in their father's belly with Hades. With him and the others. The scrape of their father's teeth as she slid down his throat. The churn of acid and darkness. This for her Kore, darkness.

"No, no, not eat her. To be his wife. Father arranged it. Hades said he wanted her, so Zeus blessed it."

Demeter blinked. Nature blinked. 

Grown trees in orchards curled in blight. Burst with a rage of insects destroying from within. Crops barely started, withered brown. 

"Didn't he tell you? I'm sure he told you. You must have forgotten. Never mind. I have to go. Sun has to shine or the crops won't grow."

Demeter watched the sun rise. 

A forest, lush with hanging growth, now months like dry. So much kindling. It burst into flames. Consumed fields. Crops. The air full of so much ash. So much smoke. She filled the sky with it. She blocked out the sun. 

Mountains struggled to keep their heads above the cloak of burning air. Olympus struggled. 

Diana came to her to beg for wild things running from her rage. Flames. Plumes of smoke. Bared teeth was Demeter's response. Bared teeth and, "I want my daughter back." 

Hestia came to beg for the people at their hearths. Choking on the smoke. Starving as crops would not grow. The last blades of grass long gone for grazing. Not a single olive left in a tree. A snarl was Demeter's response.

Finally Zeus, come down from his mountain. Hera pushing him with glares. "I made a deal with Hades. Our brother. He needs a queen. Our daughter will be a Queen. That's far better than being some wild child running about in the woods."

A pine tree made an aromatic explosion. 

"You'll destroy everything." Zeus was trying to be charming. He threatened her with lightning bolts.

Demeter was nature. She was the earth. He'd taken the sky. The earth could take blows. 

Demeter looked to Hera over his shoulder. To the sister, who had chosen to be a Queen. Whose dominion was marriage with a brother-husband who ever strayed. Who consumed a wife to stop the cycle. Demeter said, "I will destroy everything, if Kore is not returned to me."

Hera nodded. "I will see what can be done." She pulled Zeus away. 

Hermes, the thief, another half-brother to her Kore, brought the message. "She ate pomegranate seeds grown in the land of the dead."

Demeter closed her eyes for a flicker. She knew the reason for their consumption. Dipped in pine resin. Seasoned. Stop the cycle. "How many?"

"Three."

"Then she's free the other nine." She leaned forward. "Or there will never be anything but ash."

Hermes fled. He fled and returned with Kore. Her Kore. Her sweet child, now into a woman. 

All that Demeter had tried to spare her was in her eyes. The inheritance of Demeter's father, and his father before him. 

No matter. All would be well.

Demeter took Kore into her arms. Between them, their tears fed the fields into green. All would be well.


	2. Rainbow Connection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From reading the harrowing tales of the North Bay fires

The air had smelled like smoke for days due to the fires raging in three different counties. Nearby towns were evacuated. Not distant emergencies, but places she'd been. Where important moments of her life had occurred.

It might not be necessary to evacuate. The fire might pass them by. The firefighters might control the blaze.

Fiona looked out her window at the tall trees whipping in the Devil Winds down from the hills. Neighbors left one by one. But she didn't want to evacuate if it just put her in the path of the fire.

Fiona waited. Ran the sprinklers. Sprayed her roof with a hose. Packed her car just in case.

Fiona felt a strange clarity. There were so many things that she would have thought would have value. Mementos from trips. Music. Paintings. Art.

She stuffed some clothes in a bag. A small painting her grandmother had made of horses running down a valley. She put her cat, Jezebel, into a cat carrier, which didn't thrill Jez, but Fiona couldn't be hunting her down if they had to run. Some camping gear. Her practice ukulele. Cheap blue plastic, but she thought she might want to strum the blues. A house full of stuff reduced to a car.

Once that was done, there was nothing more to do, but listen to the radio. 

Wait. Fall into an exhausted sleep.

Fiona woke when the fire alarms inside her house went off. The radio was only playing static. Her phone had no signal.

She went into her front yard. The houses on all sides were burning. The gutters of her house were melting. The streets were empty. The sound of the fire was deafening.

She got in her car and drove down the road past burning buildings. Hitting her horn as she went. Until she came to where a downed tree burned brightly in the smoky air blocked the road. Fiona jumped out of the car. Grabbed the cat carrier and her bag and ran. Her shoes stuck sickly to the pavement. Fiona dodged around burning branches from the once beautiful trees that lined her street. Coughed on the toxic air. Kept going.

Near the small motel at the edge of the neighborhood, she saw a small family clustered by a burning car. A woman was holding a crying child. A man was holding a pink suitcase. She yelled, "Follow me."

She led them through the neighborhood until they reached the high school. She led them behind the 1950s temporary buildings to where the swimming pool was. Old. Small. Closed through the winter. She was briefly glad the bond measure had failed a few years ago to replace it with an indoor pool.

They stood at the edge of the pool. Coughing on the smoke. She said, "I'm Fiona."

"Carl. This is Meredith, and our daughter, Suzie."

"Hello, Suzie. Don't be scared. We'll be fine here." In the distance, Fiona could hear an explosion. Probably the school science building. Maybe the gas station down the road. She didn't know. She repeated. "We'll be fine here. If the fire comes, we'll get in the water."

Susie kept crying.

Carl said, "I thought there was supposed to be an alert. Like an Amber alert. We were evacuated on Monday. There was an alert Monday."

The temporary buildings crackled, as the fire reached them. "I think we should get in the pool," said Fiona.

They climbed into the shallow end. Meredith hugged Suzie trying to keep her warm. Fiona pulled out a shirt from her bag to hold over her face. Another to drape over the front of the cat carrier, which she held above the water. She let go of the bag. It sank. Jezebel was yowling, but Fiona wasn't about to let her out.

The water was cold. While all around them structures burned. But at least there were no nearby trees.

She couldn't have said how long this went on. Minutes. Hours. She started telling Suzie stories. Things she'd read. The plot of the Wizard of Oz. A song. Sometimes it was a struggle to breathe, but she kept going.

Around them, buildings burned to ash as there was less and less left to burn.

Suzie's teeth were chattering. Jezebel was curled small in the back of the carrier. They were all alive.

They climbed out of the pool. Wet. Cold. Covered in ash. Fiona pulled her ukulele out of her bag. Poured water out of the box. She picked out a chord.

She was playing the _Rainbow Connection_ when fire truck arrived. She finished telling Suzie the plot to the _Muppet Movie_ when they reached the shelter. By then she had to start over because there were a few more children. But she figured it was the least she could do to help the parents scattered through the building take a few moments to deal with everything they'd lost.

Jezebel allowed the children to pet her. Purred and snuggled.

A reporter asked her how it felt to lose everything.

She said, "I saved my cat." She thought some more. "Also, a cheap ukulele." She plucked a few chords of Tom Petty's _Free Fallin_ , which was just as much of an answer to a fairly stupid question.


	3. Over the Rainbow to Oz

Time for her evening check. 

Sophia excused herself from the table. Her Mum smiled at her. Happy to see that she was keeping up her regime while their cousins were there. Sophie was just happy to see Mum looking so pink cheeked. She'd been drawn and tired all through the winter. Doctor's trip after trip to try and track down why she was so tired. 

Dad was busy talking about obscure points about the history of english with their cousin, Evered. They'd always been like too pod peas when they'd lived in the States.

Evred's daughter, Heather, was chatted with Sophia's little brothers about making boomerangs in their workshop.

Sophia went to her room. 

She went through the rhythms of checking her blood sugar on her monitor. A quick pin prick. She smiled as she often did thinking about these pricks being the result of tiny vampires. Dad's joke when she'd been little. The monitor let her know that she needed insulin, which wasn't a surprise. 

She was done in a few minutes. She put away her gear. 

Back to the table she went.

Her cousins were talking about their week on the Great Barrier reef. The conversation drifted to the Grand Canyon. The cabin that Mum and Dad still had up near Crater Lake. 

Mum said, "Suppose we should sell it, but it's such a bother from the other side of the world."

Heather said, "So none of you are thinking of going back to the U.S.?"

Dad laughed. "We have the cotton farm, and Sophie's starting uni in the fall."

Mum folded her napkin. "She'll be on the Women's Rugby team."

None of them said that without universal Healthcare, they wouldn't have made it some years with the cotton market crashing, all the visits to track down Mum's Lupis, Sophie's diabetes diagnosis just a year after they'd arrived. Any of it. 

The conversation drifted. Topic to topic. Until they all trooped outside under the wide open night sky to look for the Southern Cross that had eluded the cousins all week on the coast. 

The Milky Way spread out in a wide band, thick with the dust of milky stars. Sophie wondered if she'd miss it when she went to uni.

She hoped that at least she'd still be able to see the Southern Cross when she was all the way down in Sydney and far from home.


	4. Green River Burn

"The river used to burn when your father was a boy," said Carey to her grandson, Kyle.

"Grandma!" said Kyle, "I'm a big kid now. You don't have to make things up."

Her husband cleared his throat, clearly not sure where she was going with this.

They'd sat up half the night with Kyle when he'd woken worried about climate change and the world on fire or some such.

Kyle had a favorite tree that he liked to send tweety messages to, or whatever it was they called it. His favorite shirt had the planet on it. He was very concerned about big heavy things. Her serious little bird.

"That's it, we're going on a field trip," said Carey.

"But grandma, it's a school day." Kyle took going to school very seriously.

"Nope, grandma says it's a field trip day." She looked at Thomas, "He'll be asleep in class after last night otherwise."

"Fair point," said Thomas. "Go get your stuff kiddo. We're going on a field trip."

She called Kyle's school, glad that Susan had put them on the list. Hadn't been such a certain thing when she went off to get herself pulled together like some sort of marionette. Wondered sometimes just what Mathew had seen in her, but that was its own water under bridges.

Thomas made Kyle a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with extra jelly like he liked. Packed a milk box. They went to the river front.

"See there," she pointed to the sign. Kyle read the sign very seriously about the river catching fire thirteen times. He read about how that led to new rules about what could be dumped where. "Sometimes it takes something like that for people to get their heads out of their collective,"

Thomas coughed.

"Out of the ground. Like um… Ostridge or something." She hoped he'd be distracted by this scientific unfact, but not this time.

"What," Kyle tugged at the hem of his blue "Earth Home" t-shirt, "What if they don't do it soon enough?"

Carey wanted to rant about politicians too dumb not to pee in their own house. Meant she scrunched up her lips to hold the words in and didn't answer very quick.

"See those ducks?" asked Thomas. Kyle nodded. "Time was they couldn't swim here and now they can. People said our river was dead, and there wasn't anything to be done about it, but here it is. Alive and full of ducks. Just took some work." Thomas pulled some grapes out of a baggy, which was yet another reason why she loved him. "Want to feed the ducks?"

"Yes," was the enthusiastic reply.

They fed ducks by the river.


	5. Brown River

Flag Bearer could not see very well. She saw by singing as she swam. The waters of the Long River were murky. Sometimes red. Sometimes yellow. Sometimes brown, and this was the way of things even long before the factories set up to pour their poison into the river.

Dolphins were smiling singers and Flag Bearer had chosen the fresh water as her home. But that made it difficult to smile.

There had been a time when she sang to sailors. They gave her fish, and she gave them fortune in what they sought. Fish. There had been a time when she sang to poets. They gave her cups of plum wine floating on the currents and she gave them fortune in what they sought. Immortality. There had been a time when she sang to kings and emperors. They gave her pagodas built along the twists of the river banks, and she gave them fortune in what they sought. Power.

There had been a time when she could swim from one end of the Long River to the other. There had been a time.

"Did you know there are people looking for you?" asked White Snake, who found her friend Flag Bearer in the form of a young woman sitting in a tea shop in Wuhan.

Flag Bearer drank her tea. She appeared to be looking off into the distance, but again, her eyesight was very bad. She couldn't have seen the pagoda a king had built for her an age ago in the distance anyway. It was obscured by afternoon haze.

"When I gave fortune in what they sought, they became fortunate. Sleepy with luck." Flag Bearer put her tea cup down with a clink. "Now I am trying something else."

White Snake waited patiently. She poured herself some tea. She contemplated where the pagoda obscured by haze could be.

They waited to see if the fishermen, poets, and kings would wake up.

Green Snake found them drinking tea waiting. She said, "I have an idea."

Green Snake filmed Flag Bearer swimming in the river. Flag Bearer was trapped with a tangle of plastic. This was not hard to do. They did not stage it. Flag Bearer swam until she was trapped. Green Snake filmed White Snake carefully freeing Flag Bearer with tender words and a sharp knife. Green Snake put a sad song in the background. She posted the video.

It was popular.

Very popular.

"Is viral good?" asked Flag Bearer. "Doesn't that mean it's sick?"

Green Snake said, "You should study something other than immortal wisdom some time."

White Snake cleared her long throat.

"Yes, it's good," said Green Snake.

People gave Flag Bearer likes. But she only gave fortune in what they sought to the ones who did something about what they had seen.


	6. Purple Sky Calculating

"Oh, it's just like planning a dinner party," said Marlyn, waving the hand not holding her martini, "I need to make sure I plan, figure out everything I'll need, think about who'll be using what I'm making, before I write a line of code." She smiled as she sipped. Tried not to grimace at the peppermint flavour someone thought would be a good idea for the Christmas party drinks.

"Oh, don't get her started," said John over in Hardware. "She'll go on and on about the soft stuff if you let her." She could be kind and think he was pitching his voice over the canned Christmas music filling the breakroom for the company Christmas party. That he was admiring the jaunty reindeer broach on her red sweater.

John took over the conversation. John had a dick. John was a dick.

Marlyn stood there listening to him hold forth on the ideal qualities of a programmer. Math centric savants – read men - who were "Disinterested in people."

Grace laughed. "A disinterest in people would explain some of the designs I've been seeing come out of Hardware." Grace had been through the wars. Literally. She'd been a computer calculating missile trajectories during the war and for NASA after. She had the photos to prove it.

John puffed up.

Grace raised her eyebrows.

John went off to afflict some other conversation, while they got back talking about women's work – science.


	7. Green Woman Light

Her family had sailed right under that Lady Liberty statue.

"Good strong woman that," said Mama. Proud to have picked up that much American over the long month in the belly of the ship.

Papa nodded. He didn't speak. He'd sworn not to speak Italian until he knew enough American to find work.

They had ten dollars tucked in mama's corset and a sewing machine.

Rosa held the hands of the little ones while the Doctors had them cough to prove they weren't sick. She was the one who kept them from being afraid in their windowless railroad room three rooms away from a room with a window. Babies always wailing.

Summer was the worst. Stench from the blocked up privy shaft and the shared water pump almost always busted.

"Blessed to have it," said Mama sturdily.

Papa nodded.

They went to mass on Saturday night and gave thanks.

Rosa didn't feel blessed when Mama got sick after the baby came wrong. She finished Mama's piece work with good straight stitches.

"You're a good girl," said Mama, while the little ones were crying.

Papa nodded. He squeezed her hand and gave her a lemon drop.

Rosa didn't feel blessed when Mrs. O'Connell across the way died of the fever after trying to abort her baby.

Father O'Hare called it a sin. Rosa wanted to stand up and say, "And how was she supposed to feed the five little ones she already had, and her husband with a busted leg. You can't the ribs on little Bridget as it is."

She didn't say that. She sat and she said nothing.

Not entirely nothing.

But she certainly didn't feel like a good girl when she was arrested for handing out pamphlets from the Anarchists club on 45th explaining ways to prevent pregnancy. Rosa was pulled before the judge

Her family were there when the judge passed sentence. A hundred dollars or forty-five days in the workhouse. She'd have to take the workhouse. Lose her job at the factory. Wouldn't be able to help Mama do piece work.

She told Papa. "I'm so sorry."

Mama squeezed her hand.

"No sorry." Papa waved a finger. "Good strong woman that."


	8. Pink Banner

The breeze blew yellow pollen everywhere.

Kara stood on the tree lined street hoping that her allergies wouldn't act up what with all the trees getting all spring flowers with their pollinating selves.

A car drove slowly down the black macadam. The driver rolled her window down. Honked and cheered as she passed. Her daughter in little league gear waved.

Kara and the women around her, friends and strangers, waved their signs.

There were all sorts of signs. Mostly a rainbow of cardstock. Kara held a pink sign made of fabric. It belled like a sail in the breeze. She'd sewn it herself that morning. Painted her message. "Planned Parenthood is 34%=STD testing/Treatment, 35%=Contraception, 17% =Cancer Screenings, 3%=Abortions (not covered by Government funds), 1%=Other Helpful Services."

She'd written in slightly left tilting letters on the back. "Access to Birth Control Reduces Abortions!" Links to an article to back that statement up. The impulse to provide facts was strong in Kara. Hard to click on a belling sign in the breeze, but it was only way she'd avoided painting her message until the pink fabric was blue-black with words.

As it was, her sewing machine had paid a smudgy price.

It was cold in the shade. She wore a pink hat knitted by a friend that winter. A red wonder woman shirt. She waved her sign in the cool breeze and took decongestant.

She was there because when she'd needed it, when she hadn't had healthcare, when she'd been worried about the cancer that ran in her family, Planned Parenthood had been there. When she'd been working two jobs for little pay, Planned Parenthood had helped her get birth control so she could plan for a better time to have kids.

They'd stood by her.

Now she was standing for Planned Parenthood.

She wasn't alone. Hundreds of people, mostly women, formed a long slightly pink line down the leafy street. Homemade signs. Some simple. "I stand with Planned Parenthood." Others funny. "Think Outside the Box," with the shape of a woman's body. Full of puns. "The fight isn't ovary-et. Get in-vulva-ed." Some a bit grizzly with the outline of wire coat hangers and spattered with red paint.

Actually, Kara was more worried about women accidentally poisoning themselves. She'd knew the history of birth control. Any sort of internet search would return some desperate kid two or three common plants that could end a pregnancy by chewing a seed or root. Mostly by poisoning them. But as her grandma often said, "Desperate is as desperate does."

Down the street by the clinic, there was another group. Much smaller. A few dozen. The people in that group held yellow signs that read, "Repent!" and "Planned Parenthood kills babies!" Kara had heard there was a guy in Arizona who sold the signs to various protest groups. There was a profit she supposed in protesting.

Certainly the thrift store had profited when she bought the pink sheet to make her sign. 

She held it high. The breeze made it bell out like a pink sail. But what with all the pollen, it was kind of gold too.


	9. Verdigris Ghetto

Sara Coppia made herself stop teasing the loose thread in her sleeve. She'd sew it later. She made herself not sigh. Every summer was the same. At least when it came to the stench from the canals.

Sara Coppia didn't mind. She loved Venice, queen of the sea. If the air in her salon in the Jewish ghetto was presently fetid with the proximity of canal borne sewage, if her husband was restricted from owning the land where they lived, if there were rumors that her people were once more going to be expelled from her city for the good of fragile Christian souls, at least the thoughts were free and freely given in this space she'd created.

No. Not free.

Artists came in response to the money she'd give. Even the letters she exchanged with Cebà, who had written such a beautiful book about Esther, implied love if only she would convert. Great grandmama and grandpapa had converted in Spain, and Sara knew well how that had gone. It had led to their expulsion to Venice.

She told herself that she did not care. She consumed what the artists knew. Made it her own.

She supposed the summer cold she gained from the clustering admirers was an apt metaphor.

She was dabbing at the remanants of a sneeze when a friend told her why everyone was giving her such long looks. Baldassare Bonifacio, who had eaten her food, taken her gifts, had written a treatise accusing her of heresy. "They are wondering when you'll be called before the Inquisition."

Sara Coppia laughed. She laughed because was angry. She laughed because she was not going to show fear. She tossed a curl of her hair, bleached blond to the latest fashion. She adjusted the yellow cap that every Jew in Venice was made to wear. It was made of gold silk trimmed with the finest Venetian lace. That was her metaphor.

She didn't hesitate. With a copy of L'Ester by Cebà in her breast pocket, she went to her desk. She did not sleep. Anger kept her awake. Writing. In two days, she wrote, "The Manifesto of Sara Copia Sulam, a Jewish woman, in which she refutes and disavows the opinion denying immortality of the soul, falsely attributed to her by Signor Baldassare Bonifacio."

She made references. She quoted her Torah and their New Testament. She quoted Josephus. Dante. It included four sonnets. She laid bare her pain. She set flight to her humor.

Bonifacio responded by short letter claiming her words were written by a Rabbi unknown. Accusing her not only of heresy, but plagiarism.

Lines were drawn.

She sent a copy of her Manifesto to Cebà, who had sent such letters as to make a married woman blush. He coolly replied by post that she should convert to Christianity.

Perhaps she should not have suggested his conversion to Judaism by way of reply.

There were then two trials.

One in the court where by virtue of her sex and her race and her religion and her very existence, she could not speak in her own defence. She knew then which of the men clustering to her salon were her true friends for they were the ones who would speak for her.

Then there was the trial she wrote on the page. She tried herself in poetic form on Mount Parnassus before Apollo and called every woman poet in history to speak on her behalf. Her poetic defenders were cultured or crude. They called on the heights of art. They made anatomical suggestion that were impossible.

It was not wise. But fierce with worry in her home, listening to the tolling of the bell that called the curfew that locked all Jews into their ghetto at night, free nowhere but her imagination, she declared in poetic forms that she'd not be accused of a feeble mind.


	10. Yellow Signs

There were protesters outside the clinic. There were always protesters outside the clinic. Set faced men and women holding signs that read, "Repent" in big black letters on a bright yellow background.

Kara had looked it up once. There was a man in Arizona who made the signs for a profit. There was profit she supposed in picketing clinics.

A man spoke into a loudspeaker that muffled and warped whatever it was he was saying.

"Mrrrr…mrrrr," said the man, when Kara got out of her truck.

The damp heat hit her like a wall. Sweat started trickling down her cheek. She hoped the protesters had water. She hoped that today wasn't the day one of the decided to come inside with a gun and open fire.

"Mrrr…sin…mrrrr…only…" something that might have been hope. The man didn't sound that hopeful. More like someone had set his last hope on fire, run it through a meat grinder, and buried it. Hope like that.

She walked past them. "Murderer," yelled a woman in a Jesus Saves shirt. "You're going to burn in hell."

Kara went inside the air conditioned clinic.

Jenny was at reception. "You've got a full schedule, Doc."

"Always do."

Her first patient, Tonia, was in her chatty seventies. She burbled her way through her pap smear and breast exam. "Doc, I can't even tell you how much I appreciate that you warm up the damn speculum and use some effing lube."

The next four women in for pap smears and breast exams, said much the same.

Maria wanted to talk about living out her golden years. Her kids. Anything but the syphilis that was infecting its way through Golden Heights Retirement home. Kara had to have a safe sex talk with a woman twice her age.

Connor wasn't thrilled about the prostate exam. "Fugging cancer." He shrugged. "Can't even begin to tell ya how much crap I breathed in milking them cattle. Had to have my thyroid removed and one of my balls. Suppose you noticed that." He wrapped thin arms around his chest. The fading lines of a naval tattoo peeked out from the sleeves of his hospital gown. She gave him a handful of lollies for the old boys who played poker out at the gas station on the highway.

Lisa talked about bleeding through her clothes, periods that lasted months, cramps, dizziness, fainting at work. The litany of perimenopause for an unlucky twenty percent of women. When she heard Kara had a shot that should stop the bleeding, Lisa said, "Doctor Levens, just shoot me." She got a shot and IV with some iron for the blood loss.

Camille was a protester. She'd fainted in the heat. She shook off Kara's devil's ice pack and was driven away.

Pam was pregnant with her second child. "When they gave me the c-section so I could have Peter, that's my son," she leaned against her husband, Chris, "they didn't tell me it was going to make my gut go catty wompus." By catty womopus, she meant that scarring from her cesarion was causing her babies' placenta to spread throughout her abdomen. They talked about which hospitals followed the Stanford Medical guidelines for dealing with haemorrhaging, which could save her life, and which ones didn't. They talked. Pam cried. Chris looked terrified. Determined.

Terri was ready to be done. "Doctor Levens, I've got six kids. Time to close up shop." They talked through birth control options.

Tina came in shaking so hard Kara wondered how she'd been able to drive to the clinic. Tina said, "I was at a party. I woke up… I woke up… my panties… they were… I only had a drink or two… I… I… don't…and…and… I'm sorry…I'm so sorry."

Kara sat with her, holding her hands. Helped her while they called the police. Wondered as she took the samples if the police would have the resources to review this rape kit or if it would sit in storage waiting years for some sort of justice. Kara gave Tina a prescription for a Day After pill. Water. A lolly. A comforting hand on her shoulders until a friend came to pick her up.

Kelly had found a lump in her breast and wanted a biopsy yesterday. "My grandma died of breast cancer. My mom had to have a mastectomy. I need to know."

Last patient of the day. Anna and her boyfriend, Tom, were there for a prescription for the Abortion pill, since it had been under nine weeks since her last period. "Aren't you going to ask me why?" said Anna.

"That's not what I'm here for." Kara explained how the pills worked and what Anna could expect.

Did some paperwork.

Saw Raina with her Mom, Gerte. Raina was there to learn how to give herself a breast exam. She scowled at the lolly, but asked for cherry.

All in a day's work.

The protesters were gone by the time she left, the sun fading orange on the horizon. The lightning bugs were just starting spark in the bushes.

She looked at an abandoned black and yellow sign by the trash can. The edge was bent, probably when the woman holding it fell. Somewhere in Arizona, a man was going to make another sale.

Kara said to the sign, "Faith. Hope. Charity. And the greatest of these is Charity."

The sign didn't answer back. She didn't expect it to.


	11. Yellow Flower Crushed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Features implied non-con. May trigger.

She was still clutching the daffodil stem, yellow trumpet crushed, looking up from the floor of Death's chariot when the earth opened up in front of them. The earth swallowed them. Put out the sun.

She sat very still. Good girls are quiet. Good girls don't make a fuss. Persephone was just a girl when her uncle, Death, kidnapped her (No name – she would not name him).

She was still clutching the crushed flower when they arrived in the land of Death. Still clutching it when he stopped the chariot. When he…

She was just a girl. She couldn't move. Could hardly think. Could only think this wasn't happening while she crushed her daffodil. While he crushed her. While he…

"You're hysterical," was the very first thing that Death told her after he did what he did. "It's because of your wandering womb." Death was proud of what he'd done. Proud of how pretty she was. "If only you'd take a little better care of yourself. I kept telling you that every time we talked at your Father's."

She tried to remember when they'd talked. When she'd somehow led him to think this was okay. Kore hardly knew what to think other than, "No."

A good girl wasn't allowed no.

She tried not to go into Death's house. She shook her head when he said, "I hope you'll come inside." He wrinkled his bearded lips at her. "Crazy girl. You're the one who asked to visit. Your father warned me you might be like this, but I spoke up for you."

"No," was all she could think to say.

"I did. I know your Father is a liar," said Death, "But I took him at his word when he said I could marry you. You're my wife and I'll never stray. Not like your father."

Her father was a liar. He cheated constantly. He couldn't have given Kore away.

Maybe.

She wanted her mother in the long sunless months.

Persephone grew flowers. Held her hand over the soil and drew a flower out of the earth. Out of her heart. To remind herself of who she was. The goddess of spring. Of flowers and the gifts they bring.

Death appeared out of nowhere (No name – Never name him). He had a helmet that let him move around invisibly. He liked appearing just to hear what he called her cute little scream. He liked to watch her.

This time, he put a diamond necklace around her neck.

It was heavy.

No air. She couldn't breathe.

He knocked over the pot. He said, "Crazy girl. What do you need flowers for when I can give you gems? Now don't I deserve a kiss for such a pretty necklace?"

He didn't wait for her answer. He never did.

He didn't know why she ate the pomegranate seeds. He'd decided that it was because Persephone wanted to stay. He never knew the flower he'd crushed was a pennyroyal.

She didn't tell him that the thought of having a child far from the sun and moon and sky - Death's child – her kidnapper's child - was the reason she ate them. Was the reason that she smiled when he complained that she wasn't pregnant. He wasn't really death, or he'd have known.

It was the same smile she gave after her Mother bargained for a slice of freedom.

When she gathered the women to her at the festival of Thesmophoria in the autumn. In the days before she was forced to return to her kidnapper. She told them the forbidden secret that controlled life and death.

Told them, and smiled.


	12. Flying High

Ayaan sat on a white stone in the city of dust that was the refugee camp. She waved away flies. Her best friend, Hibaaq, sat closed to her. It was too hot to play. They were too tired. Hungry. They watched birds fly over the camp. They counted gulls lost from the sea. They watched ravens torment a golden hawk. This was what they were doing when Papa brought the news that their family was going to America.

The trees were on fire when Ayaan arrived in Minnesota. That's what she thought at first. So many trees turning brilliant red, yellow, orange, and finally brown. Crunchy on the ground as she jumped on leaves. They lived in brown brick house with three other families crowded into the bedrooms. It smelled wonderful. Cinnamon and spice and cooking meat.

On her way to her first day in school, her hand in Mama's, a man threw a cup of coffee at them. Screamed words Ayaan didn't understand. She learned the words later sitting the only brown girl in a class full of shades of pale.

Hannah, a Mennonite, with a white cap covering her blond curls shared half her peanut butter sandwich in exchange for half of Ayaan's Cambuulo. They were both very happy with the exchange.

On graduation day, Ayaan stood with her cap over her hijab and accepted a tube of paper. It wasn't her diploma. That would come later by mail. She clutched it as if were the true thing and smiled for Mama and Papa. The dogwood tree next to field was blooming and the air was sweet.

After her residency, Ayaan took a job with Doctors Without Borders. Went to work in a refugee camp. A woman in a faded black hijab said, "Ayaan, do you remember me?" It took a moment. Twenty years of them. To find Hibaaq in the thin woman. In rejected applications. In a life lived in limbo. Hibaaq introduced Ayaan to her family. Her three sons. Sitting still and sharp ribbed on a white rock in the shade of their shelter.

When Ayaan finished her rotation and started work at County General, she carried the weight of two destinies on her rounds.

She spoke about that to the crowd at the Women's March in Saint Paul. She spoke about the heaviness of that responsibility. She spoke about dreams. She talked about recent elections. An old white man who promised walls. Exclusion. Hate. A Somali woman sworn in to represent Minneapolis. She talked about responsibility to the future. She said, "There are going to be people who will tell you what can't be done. They are going to tell that you can't do it. To give up on your dreams. But… I once had a teacher tell me not to give up on my dreams. Give up on my nightmares. Throw those right away, but to not give up on my dreams. Now I'm saying the same to all of you."

Ayaan wrestled with dreams for three days after that day. She wrestled with them in the sleeplessness early morning with her husband's snores a steady rhythm beside her. She wrestled with the idea that her dream was pride. She wrestled with the weight of responsibility. Finally, she decided enough was enough and greeted her husband with a cup of coffee when he woke up and a statement. "I want to run for office."

A thousand hands shaken. A thousand steps. Smears. Claims she'd married her brother. Claims that she killed children. Claims that she worshiped Satan. Claims against twelve hundred hand written postcards by strangers urging voters to, "Please, vote for Dr. Daar." People knocking on doors. A whole lot of hope.

Ayaan put her hand on the Koran and repeated the words of office. Attended a ball in the State legislature. There was a cake in the shape of the state capital. It was butter sweet. Hardly a brown face in the rom. She'd already been greeted by the few women representatives. None of them in hijabs.

She sat in her assigned seat. The one that represented her district. Her people. The ones who had trusted her enough to elect her. She was told, "Let Mr. Sampson finish his statement."

With a thought to those ravens tormenting the golden hawk so long ago, she persisted.


	13. Detaselling & Derouging

Sofia pushed her spade into the soil. The rogue stalk's roots struggled to hold onto the earth, but she was determined. Roguing was a good job. It paid better than detasseling.

Both jobs kept the corn the way the farmer wanted it. A specific hybrid with a higher yield.

"I shouldn't have worn shorts." Annie's legs were scratched up by the corn leaves. Annie's pale face was red. Her freckles dripped with sweat. "Ugh, when Papa called this a rite of passage, I was picturing something more… you know." She waved her hands.

Sofia didn't know. She put the rogue in the garbage bag tied to her belt.

"Still, I'll earn enough for a semester at nursing school." Annie pulled a long silk tassel off a waist high stalk of corn. "Ugh, I hate it here. I've just got to get out of here, you know."

Sofia kept here eyes down. She would move on a few weeks. Tomatoes ripening in South Carolina. Peaches in Georgia. Grapes in California.

If they did not dig her up as a rogue. The men and women preaching about how she was a rogue. Fewer and fewer of their own children detasseling corn every year and none among the tomatoes, peaches, or grapes.

"How do you know which ones are the bad ones?" Annie was not very good at detaselling. She wanted to talk.

Sofia pointed to the color of the roots. "Wrong color." There were a dozen other things. The shape of the leaves. The sheen on the stalk. Years of experience down to a feeling.

She'd have felt more comfortable if Juana or Pedro were the ones working her row. But they weren't. She kept her head down.

The James boys looped back up their row, looking for tassels to pluck. They were loudly saying rude things about Sofia and Annie. About their bodies. Making them nothing, but bodies. Local boys who tasselled were often like this. Sofia wondered if Annie's father remembered this.

She could not afford to answer back. She was easy to pull out. She had no roots. This job paid to keep her children in school. Living with their abuelita and sleeping in good beds.

She dug up another rogue. She kept her eyes down.

Annie shouted back, just as rude. She could yell. She could do that. She could threaten to tell their mothers. The James boys looked away. They kept going down their row. Annie winked at Sofia. "They're quitters. I bet they won't be back tomorrow."

Sofia could not say. She was not certain Annie would be back the next day.

She said, "Drink more water. Thirsty work."

They drank from their water bottles. Two women working under the hot high sun.


	14. Pulled Up By Her Bootstraps

When Ella May grew ill with the sickness, they took her to City General hospital. Even though it weren't hardly necessary. Just a cough and some dizziness. A touch of vomit. Nothing serious.

No call to send her to some place full of sick people. No call to send her to some gov'ment charity hospital where they sent layabouts. Folks without two pennies to rub together. Even if Ella May's pay weren't a stretch beyond nickels and she didn't a like a bit of the laws that put insurance in her way.

"Pride," said Nurse Calla with her voice lilting of a Caribbean island, "she don't like the hit she gets from old sickness."

Ella May suffered the nurse to wipe her ass and whispered around the oxygen tube, "I just believe a soul has to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps." Nurse Calla shook her head and finished her rounds.

Next day, Nurse Calla came in wearing a pair of boots. She said, "Here be the boots." She point to a strap. "Here be a strap." She sat down in the chair next to Ella May. "Now you be telling me how to pull myself up by that strap." She put her index fingers through each strap and tugged. It didn't pull her to her feet.

"Just a saying," muttered Ella May.

Nurse Calla stopped fiddling with her boots. She helped Ella May sit up in her bed. "It's just a saying that used to mean something that can't be done."

Ella May wasn't so sure about that. She suffered the doctors and nurses care.

If she fell to chatting with a few of them, what of it. If she went to Nurse Calla's wedding to a nice bloke up Hampton way, it was a lovely ceremony.

She was healthy enough to put on her boots and do the chicken dance.


	15. Say What?

Her last tryout went something like this. "Could you try to be more Asian? Something more fragile and delicate. But still sexual."

Cindy Lu thought about that. She looked at the middle aged white man asking the question. Thought about the description of the plot, "Man keeps women in his basement." Answered honestly, "Probably not."

That day she put up her IndieGoGo page for a project that she'd wanted to do for a really long time. If no one was going to make art she wanted to be in, she'd make it herself.

She and her crew burned a picture of the Last Samurai when they were funded.

When they finished the script, they shredded a picture of the Avatar movie – the white washed one – not the blue one, although in all fairness the blue one was Dances with Wolves in Space – whatever they shredded it.

They microwaved a copy of the white washed live action Ghost in the Shell when they finished filming. That was a mistake, but it looked cool.

When they hit a million views, they had sparkling wine from Baja.

Enough being defined by what other people thought.


	16. Mission Gold

Coyote watched as soldiers came. As they gave names to mountains and lakes that had names. As hunted men and women, as they hunted children. It had something to do with gold or missing mules.

She took the shape of a gnarled old man. She was very good at shifting her shape. Her beard amused her. She had a mule. It wasn't stolen. Coyote didn't need to steal. 

She convinced that mule to eat nuggets of gold. 

This was not easy.

Very not easy.

She had to hide the nuggets in golden poppies.

She went to where the soldier's bayonets were wet with blood. The earth was crying. 

Coyote said, "I need to go north, where I cannot take this mule. What will you trade me for it. It shits gold." 

The soldiers needed to see this before they would buy the mule. They waited. Smoked tobacco from Coyote's pouch. When the soldiers were convinced, they gave her paper. 

She left them the mule.

The soldiers were used to using their bayonets to putting down animals. Men. Women. It was convenient to call them animals. They were used to using their guns to kill dogs. Humans. They called them dogs when they killed.

They looked at each other. Humanity fell away from their eyes. 

Coyote came back a few days later to collect her mule. 

It was all she could do to help her people.


	17. Sugar Cube Sculpture

There was a little girl. Her hair was very straight. It was very black. Like a Raven's wing. She lived in a yellow house with a wide magnolia tree that she liked to climb out front.

Now it was the year that she was to learn the history of her State. A golden state with a Golden history.

Now was the year that she was to build a Mission out of sugar cubes.

She worked on it on the big table in the front of her big house. She was all done. She even had a little priest to ring the bell. There were Indians. They were happy working in the field.

That's when Coyote crept out of the corn. Whispered, "Hey, want to see how it really went."

The little girl nodded yes.

It would be hard to say if she regretted that in later years. At the time, she screamed. But her sugar cube sculpture about what happened to the Ahwahnechee opened a few ten year old's eyes.


	18. Aquitted

The police looked like giant black beetles, their faces distorted behind their clear plastic face plates as they faced down the crowd. Clicks from behind their shields.

Crowd was chanting, "Hey! Hey! Ho! Ho! These racist cops have got to go!"

Cora chanted with them. She'd never chanted such a thing in her life. Her cousin had been a police officer. Her grandfather had been a prosecuting attorney. Her family was always posting about blue lives mattering. But she'd had to come. She had to when the verdict came out.

A cop spoke clear and muffled into a loudspeaker. "You need to disperse. This is an unlawful assembly. You do not have a permit. It's not safe here. Return to your homes."

An old woman near her laughed. She was wearing a blue dress and hat. Like someone going to church or a funeral. She said, "If this don't take me back." She smiled. "Unlawful assembly. Lawful because I've got as much right to assemble as anybody."

"I've never done anything unlawful," Cora said. A cold sliver of ice twisting in her belly. Her mother was going to be so angry. "I've never… I've never done anything like this."

The old woman said, "I was arrested thirty times back when I was riding for freedom."

Cora thought that might be something in the sixties. A lifetime before she'd been born. When people marched.

When Cora'd asked her friend, Shanika, "Didn't the jury see the video? The police are supposed to serve and protect?"

Shanika looked at her like she was crazy.

Cora'd had to come.

Giant beetles telling them to disperse. They were terrifying. Nothing like Officer Whosit, who'd visited school when she was a kid.

A small woman with a megaphone, one of the people leading the march, said, "Everyone sit down," and that command was repeated in a ripple through the crowd.

Everyone sat down.

The police eased back.

The old woman struggled to sit. Cora helped her sit on the curb. The old woman said, "This was a good sight easier fifty years ago."

The small woman with her megaphone called out, "Black Lives,"

Cora yelled back "Matter."

The woman reached into her purse and pulled out a packet of cough drops. She said, "You need to pace your voice."

"Thank you." Cora took a cough drop. She sucked on the sweet taste of lemon around chants.


	19. Violet Bridge

The rain had begun one day in the desert and had not stopped. For three moons, the clouds poured out their buckets.

Not that Supay, the Lady of Cao, could see the moon. Not even her twin, Karwa, gifted-cursed with an inheritance of wings instead of arms could fly above the clouds.

Quilla, mother moon, hid her face. She stayed well away from the storm. But her brother, Inti, father sun, climbed down through the clouds. Burning brightly, Inti shouted to Illapa, father rain, "You belong in the mountains. Not flooding my desert."

Illapa's answer was a roar of thunder and the drum of cold rain on earth not ready to receive it.

Supay did what she could. She went to the dams built by her people to farm the desert. She raised the twin staffs of the Lady of Cao. The source of her power. With a subtle movement of her left hand, she froze the dams. With a subtle movement of her right hand, she shone the summer's light to guide the people to the temple on white hill.

The people of Cao followed the summer's light. They went inside the great temple on the white hill. Each family had their share in making the mud bricks for the temple. Supay did her best to ensure that everyone gathered in the safest place.

The river that was the vein of life in desert's body flooded its banks. The spirits of the river climbed out of the river. Dark green and slick. Flooded the buildings by the river.

Supay did her best, but the river spirits swatted away the work of centuries. They destroyed the dams. Flooded the fields. Karwa plucked her up just in time. Flew her to the safety of the great temple as Cocha, mother sea, marched from the sea. Her children, the waves, followed.

The sisters watched as Cocha waded waist deep up the path of the river. Cocha was tall as the white hill on which the city of Cao rested. Fish jumped in her braids. A whale blinked from the dark depths of her hips. Cocha yelled at her brothers, but did not stop them fighting. She left them arguing. She walked all the way to the mountains where her sister, Pacha, mother mountain, lived.

Cao had been a city in the desert. Now the temple was on a shrinking island far from the shore.

They couldn't stay.

There was no way to leave.

Supay held the staff of winter in her left hand. She held the staff of summer in her right hand. She moved them in the ancient subtle way to weave a rainbow between them. She wove a band of solid light.

Supay held out the staff of winter to her sister. She offered her sister half of her power. "You are the only one who can fly to safety. Between us we could build a road."

"I can't." Karwa waved her wing arms. "I cannot hold the staff. I can't weave the light."

Supay raised the staff higher. "Don't let mother's voice echo in your ears."

Karwa took the staff of winter. She gripped it in a clawed foot. She launched into the air. She struggled in the wind. She didn't give up. She flew up to ride a powerful gust. Soon she was nothing but a blue dot that disappeared into the mountains. Supay waited until finally she felt the tug of winter's staff on summer.

They wove.

At first there was only a strand of violet. Then other colors came.

Between them, the sisters wove a rainbow bridge. She called out to her people, but they did not wait to be summoned. They climbed up the long ramp. They climbed onto the rainbow bridge huddled close together. The people walked in a steady stream while Supay wove the light with her sister. Until even the last of them had walked onto the bridge.

The building shuddered as the waves rose. Beat at the melting mud of the walls. Supay climbed onto the rainbow bridge. She walked backwards on it and rolled up the light bridge as she went. She saw the great temple sink beneath the waves.

She went past Inti and Illapa. Past where Cocha sat at her sister, Pacha's, feet. Pacha braided Cocha's hair. Great spiralling towers of water.

She went past the sisters to where Quilla showed her face in the high mountains. High above the clouds.

To where her sister waited with their people in a rich green river valley. To where the last strand of violet faded away.

This was a long ago. This was why the lady of Cao left her city by the sea to climb high into the mountains. This is why there are two ladies of Cao. This is why they share their power. This was how the city that is the womb of the world came to be built from stone.


	20. I am Become Death

Her husband, Al, did all the driving to the cabin outside of the Trinity site. Dizzy focused on what rest she could. That and their baby currently drumming on her ribs.

When they checked in at the cabin, Dizzy told the man that they were traveling across country. She was still wearing her baggy overalls from work. They weren't going to win her any fashion awards with the wives of the other scientists and military personnel. But with so few scientists in her field, she couldn't afford for someone got precious about her pregnancy. None of them could if the Nazis had their way. So, baggy clothes and sweaters.

The clerk hardly looked at her. He kept looking at Al. Clearly wondering why an able bodied man wasn't doing his part for the war effort. She suppressed tired giggle and waited for Al to collect the keys.

They spread their equipment out on the creaky bed. If she could have bent that far, she'd have suggested that they flop the mattress on the ground, but seven months pregnant meant she was arranging Geiger counters with swollen feet on a sagging mattress.

"You're working too hard." Al put his arm around her. She closed her eyes and let herself rest against his warmth for a moment.

Over the short wave, they heard the Control Center chatter with the pilot of the B-29. Waited for the forecast thunder and lightening storm to blow over. For the rain to finish. Waited.

Waited until waiting was done.

Three. Two. One.

Control Center reported that the gadget was a go.

The rickety little cabin shook with the force of the sound wave a hundred miles away.

Elizabeth and Al took measurements. Readings. Radiation hadn't reached them yet. Over the radio there was a chatter. Laughter. Voices.

Oppenheimer said clear as a bell, "Now I am become Death. Destroyer of worlds."

Dizzy didn't have time to laugh when Bainbridge said, "Now we are all sons of bitches."

Let them chatter. She had a job to do.

Had to take a moment to breathe while her baby decided to kick a drum solo on her ribs. She put her hand over her belly. Al bent his forehead to hers. Hand next to hers. On the life and the death they were bringing into this world.

A better world, she prayed.

All will be well. Maybe. Like Erwin Schrodinger's thought experiment about the cat. Impossible to know until they opened the box.  

All will be well. She prayed and kept working.

They had to build a better world. Drum beats on her bladder.

They had to.


	21. Coral Time

She made the world. Some days.

Some days she's Kali. She waves a sword for truth. She has many arms. She waves many weapons.

Krishna tells a prince on the battlefield of a just war, "I am become Time."

Kali says, "Stop." She's holding a stop watch in one of her many hands. She moves to another position. "Start." She unstops time.

Krishna says, "the great one, who causes decay of the worlds."

Kali leaves the battlefield. Kali didn't feel like being Kali in this moment.

She's Lakshmi now. She goes to where a girl is sitting on a stool. It's a very heavy stool. The seat is shaped like a lotus petal of many colors. She is angry with her brother.

She's always Durga. She is always a mother. She goes to the great battlefield. The girl's heart. There a battle rages. Krishna is there too. There too Krishna tells the warrior on the chariot to fight evil. Do good. That Time is the great destroyer.

Lakshmi whispers in the girl's heart, "A great creator too."

The girl slips from her lotus seat. She goes back out into the garden where her brother has dug up her seeds to see if they've grown yet. She plants again.

When her sister comes to sit next to her, she explains what she is doing. She lets her water, but not too much. Plants can drown if they get too much water, just as much as they die if they don't get enough.

In the girl's heart, Durga smiles.


	22. Green Carnation

Charity lacked purpose. She had a job. She taught piano to the children of Colwich in the cottage she shared with Penelope. But she lacked the purpose of her youth when she'd worked in London's slums.

"Volunteered," reminded Penelope. "You weren't paid."

Colwich was a quiet seaside town, and Penelope and Charity lived quiet lives in it. It was the sort of place Queen Victoria might smile wistfully to think about, and wish Dickens would send more of his characters for a visit.

Penelope and Charity weren’t born in the Colwich. Penelope came in answer to an advertisement. She'd arrived with three black dresses and Charity. 

Penelope often said, "It makes sense for two spinsters to live together."

Mrs. Keverson who led the Anglican Ladies Knitting for Missionaries League agreed that made good financial sense.

"Oh, it's all about the finances," said Charity stabbing her wool together in a way that would never make scarf.

As they left gatherings, Charity would put her arm through Penelope's arm. "But we do rattle together fairly well."

"But what if one of you wants to marry?" asked the league ladies, the Anglican minister, the grocer where they shopped, the innkeeper's wife, little Felicity with her skipping rope, and Judge Black, who was somewhat sweet on Penelope's pretty curls and quiet smile.

Penelope looked wistful at that.

The villagers decided that Penelope had had a disappointment in love.

Sometimes in the quiet of their cottage, Charity curled into a window seat to look at the leaden sky over a churned pea green sea. "I miss work that is real." She heaved a thousand imperial pound sigh. "Helping the women labouring in London. Bettering their lives."

Penelope sat down on the window bench. She put her forehead against Charity's. They breathed each other's air. Each other's life's breath there in the safety of their cottage away from prying eyes. Penelope said, "No one can imagine that we exist here."

"Queen Vic doesn't think we exist at all." Charity pulled away to glare at the sea. "Do we exist?"

Penelope squeezed her hand. "Better hidden than being like Wilde, arrested and breaking rocks for a love that dare not speak its name."

They sat there for a very long time. Not speaking.

A rare argument.

The only argument.

A repeated one over the years.

A loud one that drove them out of their briar rose clung cottage, off to brave the bluster and take tea at Mrs. McDollop's Tea Shoppe.

Little Felicity, now not so little, brought them their tea and an unasked for order of cream and scones. 

When Charity, already not in the best of moods, protested, Felicity said, "I just… the two of you are so sweet, still in so much love after all these years, I wanted," she shrugged, "to give two such sweet people something sweet. I mean, when my Gran died, you played music for hours and it was how I felt, and… just being here, I think, I just. I don't know. I shouldn't have."

"Oh," said Charity. "Thank you."

"But, we're not, we're just," Penelope trailed off.

Felicity reddened. "You don't have to… everyone knows. It's all fine." She flushed even brighter. "Let me get you a refill on your water." She whisked away with their bright pink tea pot with the yellow cats on the side.

Charity reached across the table put her hand over Penelope's. "I love you."

"I…" Penelope looked around the quietly clinking room. They weren't the only patrons on this cold spring day. She said the words she'd held inside their rose clung cottage. "I love you."


	23. Muck

At the bottom of the deep lagoons of a beautiful many spired city, there lived a bottom feeding monster, who wanted to convince the people of the city that dolphins were ugly creatures.

This may have been out of jealousy.

This may have been out of anger.

This may have been because the monster wanted to drag everyone down into the muck.

On certain days, when the air was right, it would rise up out of the depths. It would smash at the beautiful bridges of hopeful curve and glittering dreams.

On the day when the moon was waning gibbous, the many armed monster rose up and yelled. "We are the sons of Odin. We cannot be replaced."

Pink dolphin came to fight it. She shouted and squealed. Thrashed the water and knocked over a pier in her fight to drive the monster back into the muck. A rich man standing on a lofty tower from his distant perch said, "There are two monsters fighting in the water."

One-eyed Odin sighed. He was a sky god. This caused a small storm. He handed the man a monocular (Odin had no reason for binocular).

The rich man didn't look through the monocular. He said, "I know I'm right. There are two monsters."

Hanna, a girl who lived in the ghetto by the waters, said, "It's obviously one a monster and a giant pink dolphin." She said to the people around her. "I mean look at it." Although, the ensuing debate over whether it mattered given the fate of the buildings the pink dolphin accidentally destroyed, went on longer than the battle. 

Pink Dolphin drove the monster back into the depths. 

It did not stay there. It stewed in the muck.

On the day when the moon was a crescent cup, the monster rose up and yelled, "Blood and soil! The newcomers are stealing your jobs. Your livelihood. Throw them into the water and be clean." It yelled and thrashed bridges of hopeful curve and glittering dreams.

This may have been out of spite.

This may have been out of hunger.

This may have been because the monster wanted to drag everyone down into the muck.

Pink dolphin came to fight the monster. He shouted and squealed. Thrashed the water and knocked over a ferry building in his fight to drive the monster back into the muck.

The rich man standing on a lofty tower from his distant perch said, "There are two monsters fighting in the water."

A man down on his luck agreed. Fortune who had once smiled on this man to the exclusion of all others, had turned her back. He had lost so much. The work that made him feel whole. 

This man heard the monster. He said, "Maybe I should. What could it hurt?" He pushed a man with a yellow star on his shirt into the water. He pushed a man who didn't look like he was from around there. He pushed a lot of people. He was not alone.

They may have have done this out of fear.

They may have have done this out of pain.

They may have have done this out of because they wanted Fortune to smile on them.

This didn't cause Fortune to smile. All she did was keep turning her wheel. 

Wang Duyuan, who shared deck space with eight people on a boat, said, "Clearly, there is one monster and a dolphin come to fight it." He fished the yellow starred man out of the water. He pulled out the man who had been born in the many spired city. He pulled out a lot of people. He was not alone.

Blue Dolphin drove the monster back into the depths.

It did not stay there. It stewed in the muck.

On the day when the sun had its shortest day and the moon was too tired to rise, the monster rose up. It yelled, "The others are oppressing you in secret society. Throw everything in the muck and be free." It thrashed the bridges of hopeful curve and glittering dreams.

This may have been out of a dingy heart.

This may have been of a narrow vision.

This may have been because the monster wanted to drag everyone down into the muck.

Hanna, who was having Christmas Dim Sum with Wang Duyuan, said, "What is that creature on about?"

Wang Duyuan ate the pork pot stickers so Hanna wouldn't have to worry about them. "I don't know. But it keeps coming back."

They waited. But no dolphin arrived. 

Fortune carefully wrote on a blackboard, "You are the dolphins you are waiting for." She paused then wrote. "Dolphins work in pods."

Hanna sighed. "But we're the ones who keep getting thrown in the muck or having our homes destroyed."

Wang Duyuan said, "No one will listen to us. Just yesterday there was a woman yelling on internet about boat people daring to clutter her harbor. Never mind the giant monster who shows up week to week."

Hanna waved her chopsticks. "There's always someone wrong on the internet." She ate a beef dumpling.

"Cookies," said Wang Duyuan's mother.

"Everyone loves cookies," said Hanna's mother.

This is where Fortune cookies come from. 

Fortune is still writing them.

Those cookies wait to be cracked.


	24. Soup

She wasn't trying to crack the glass ceiling. Just have a career. Earn a living. Live her life.

Esther's cousin, Mordecai, pointed her towards an accounting job at Cyrus Financial. He didn't work there. They were one of clients for plant watering, but he'd heard that they were hiring.

She went in not knowing that the average length of time working there was nine months. That she'd be expected to be there all the hours there were or she was a slacker. Taking discretionary time off meant that she didn't care about Cyrus Financial's success. That if she left before a year, that shiny signing bonus that her recruiter crooned about would be clawed back with no way of getting back the cut the government had already taken.

Quitting would cost her money. Being fired would cost her money.

She had student loans. She worked the hours and she worked hard.

Hal down the row of desks made jokes about their corporate overlords, Shylock and pounds of flesh. They weren't funny.

She didn't say anything.

He was the lead on their team.

She wanted to get ahead. She wanted to make it to one year.

She hadn't written on her paperwork when she was hired that she was Jewish. It wasn't the middle ages or Fascist Germany. She wasn't like cousin Mordecai, who refused to push the buttons of elevators after sun sunset on Friday, or eat anything that wasn't certified kosher.

She was a modern woman.

She'd eat bacon. Turkey bacon. Fat was fat after all.

She'd smile at the Christmas music blaring in every store in September, nod when the doorman wished her Merry Christmas, and declare that she loved Christmas lights at the Company Holiday party festooned with Holly and Nutcrackers, and brilliant red bunting.

Esther reminded herself that Christmas trees were a pagan tradition.

Esther reminded herself that she'd get ahead on her merits.

Oh, she passed on what Mordecai overheard in the Purchasing Department about servers that had been both rented and purchased. How certain wage slaves in Asset Management were boasting about pocketing the rent. She passed it on and was promoted. Made it past a year. Got a bonus. Golden Handcuffs that could be clawed back if she didn't stick around another year.

Mordecai came by for dinner. It was nice. It was good. He brought Matzo soup. The last Matzo soup that was going to be made at Purim, the Kosher Deli on 6th and Main. Their loan had been foreclosed. He said, "That's not the only Jewish business that had closed recently. You should look into it."

"It's not my responsibility." Esther was tired. She had laundry to do and no food in the fridge. She'd have liked some time to date. Someone nice. Not a jerk. Her bar had been lowering after the last few attempts.

"Ah, ah," Mordecai waved the finger of responsibility. "The Lord has a plan. If there's something going on, and you do nothing, then surely you will be caught up in it as well."

She told herself it was the financial crisis. She told herself that it wasn't anything. She did a juice cleanse. She meditated with Sephardic music.

She dug in. It was what she'd trained to do with the education that she was still paying student loans on. A pattern. Certain groups foreclosed on as a result of hidden fees. Ratcheting rates. Balloon payments. Predatory loans.

She went in looking at businesses in the Jewish community. Found hers wasn't the only community targeted. Found disproportionate foreclosures in black communities, Asian, Hispanic. Lost homes and businesses, who'd never had huge margins anyway. Barbershops closed. Soup pots cooled. Bodegas shuttered. Intersectional foreclosures.

That wasn't all.

Mr. Haman, the V.P. of Accounts, activities were alarming. More than a little alarming. Funnelling company funds to neo-Nazi organizations. Paying for adds that played on people's fears. Us and them. Shell corporations within shells. 

She couldn't just go before the board. She'd be fired.

She put on her nicest dress. The red one that showed some cleavage. Lipstick. Makeup. Went to the weekly TGIF hunting VPs. Caught the CEO, Mr. Cyrus himself, who was more than happy to talk over a glass of scotch.

She tried not to choke. Put her concerns out there.

She was escorted out of the building fifteen minutes later with a half empty box from her desk.

But when she testified about the evidence that she'd copied off site, she didn't think about those golden handcuffs or those impending student loans.

She got a job working for a non-profit, was back to sharing an apartment with Mordecai, someone had to push his Saturday buttons, and the courage of persistence.

Oh, and a lifetime supply of Matzo soup from Purim, which had reopened on 4th and Susa, after the court case repaid them damages, and Mr. Haman went to prison.

It was very good soup.


	25. Ink River

When Prabita came into the marketplace, the people ran away. The market stalls emptied very quickly. She assumed this was because she was half scorpion and half woman. As people ran from her, she somewhat forlornly recited the spell that could cure any poison. After that the recipe for a medicine that would clear film over the eyes. She was on a roll when she explained the best way to prevent cholera.

A beggar woman, her arms wrapped in bloody rags, said, "I didn't think monsters thought it was needful to give a lecture before killing."

"I'm not here to kill," said Prabita, raising her stinger proudly. "I'm not a monster."

"Don't get your tail up in a twist." The woman shifted slowly. The woman scratched around the red sores on her nose, "must say I'm curious. Did you turn down the advances of a spirit or something, and got cursed to become," she waved at Prabita, "whatever you are?"

Prabita came closer to the woman. "Not in the way you think. When the Monguls threw all the books from the House of Wisdom in the Tigris River, there were so many pages that the water ran black with ink. I ran to those shores to drink and save what books that washed ashore."

"Reading turned a woman into a scorpion. That's disappointing."

"Oh, no, I was always half scorpion and half woman. Now I'm one who knows how to cure every ill." She waited. Wondered. Needed to be asked.

The woman got up slowly. "If I lead you outside of town, to where the sick wait to die, do you think you could cure us?"

Prabita waved her stinger in the air happily. "Let's find out." She was being modest.

She'd drained the Tigris dry that day.


	26. Glass Bottle

Her teacher gave every student a pamphlet. It had two sides. They talked a long time with the students.

Maia read it again and again on the beach down from her house. The sand was warm beneath her feet. Soft yellow and powder fine. Petee said that he'd read on the internet that nuclear bombs turned sand into glass. Maia wiggled her toes beneath the top layer of sand to the cool damp that lay beneath. She turned her face up towards the sun burning bright in the blazing blue sky. Wondered how much glass her island would make.

The pamphlet didn't say if she'd see the bomb when it was coming. If the ships that sailed out of the naval base at the other end of the island would be able to shoot it down.

The pamphlet said that she should get behind cement barriers. She glanced back at the cement blocks that kept the sand out of the soccer field. Mostly. Last week she'd worried that they wouldn't hold back the ocean if the earth got warmer and all the ice melted.

Grammy sat down next to her with a loud, "Uff."

Maia leaned into Grammy's solid warmth.

"Worried, sweetheart?"

Maia answered by turning her face into Grammy's side. Breathing sweat and sweet and the faint scent of coconut in her shampoo and conditioner. "Grammy," she pulled away suddenly terrified. "If the bomb splodes, you…you…you," she tried to force the word piling up at her lips, "can't use conditioner. You've got to shower real quick, but…but…but you can't, don't condition. It'll bind poison with your hair."

"Oh, sweetheart." Grammy hugged her tight. She didn't talk about when something long ago happened, or that the ships would keep them safe. She said, "Want to show me your sun pads again?"

Maia nodded against Grammy. She whispered, "Solar panels," cause Grammy always got it wrong.

They walked hand in hand back to their house. Maia showed Grammy how she could power a little car with the sunlight shining hot on their backs. She told her how holding onto the power of light, or using the power of waves, or the wind or, or, or. She told her Grammy that people could save their island if they wanted to. If they believed they could. "But you have to believe."

Grammy listened very carefully. She said, "Could you make me a pamphlet?"

Maia could.

She did.

She had Petee post it on the internet. Like a message in a bottle. 


	27. Inconvenient River

Ren didn't have anywhere to go when Hurricane Sandy hit. She was an office schlub. Nothing that paid enough to get out. She lived on the fourth floor of a one bedroom in East Harlem and was lucky to have it thanks to inheriting the lease from Gran.

Did the best she could to prepare. Bought candles. Bought canned food. Bought the last gallon bottles of water and she'd had to elbow a suit from Uptown to get it. Pulled the air conditioner out of the window with the help of her neighbours, Tina and Jeff. Boarded up her windows. Told herself it would be a staycay.

Wind banged at her windows. Fine. Hurricanes blow. Power went out. She had candles. 

Shop downstairs flooded because there was a damned river flowing down her damned street was not fine. It was the opposite of fine.

It was a river. In the street. Cars floating around was not fine.

She wasn't proud. She went next door. She told Tina, "That's some crazy out there." They waited in the dark together.

Next day, dammed river left, but still no power. Went to check on Mrs. Purpokolis upstairs. No elevator meant she couldn't leave her place. Stuck in a one bedroom with a heart condition.

Ren trudged the stairs. She went with the other tenants to get water from FEMA. Supplies. 

Twelve days with no power.

She told herself that no one could have seen this coming. Said that very thing at the water cooler when her office was declared fit for humans and they got the swamp smell out.

Betty from HR stared at her. "You're kidding, right?" Sent her a link to  _ An Inconvenient Truth _ . When Ren got to the part about New York flooding, there may have been a flood of swearing.

Did some research on what she could effing do about it. Because rivers in the street just wasn't right.


	28. Stars

Hini left her GPS at home. Where she was going, she wasn't to use it.

"You're crazy, you know that right?" said April.

"Nah, it's cool," said Akihiro. "You're like going wayfaring like some ancient badass."

"Whatever," said April. "There are things called planes and Hini could take one to Tahiti. She doesn't have to get in a hollowed out tree and sail there. I mean it's not like she's exploring new found territory here." April pulled into the parking lot.

Hini hugged her friends. She said for the last time before she left, "That's not what I'm exploring." She boarded the Hokule'a, the voyaging canoe that would be her home for the next few weeks. Her hands were already rough from handling the coconut fibre ropes.

She'd gone on smaller trips. Studied the patterns of waves with master navigators. The flight paths of birds. Spent night after night memorizing stars in their star houses.

But now, here was the moment. She pulled her weight on the ropes with the rest of the crew. The Hokule'a left Honolulu and into the world beyond.


	29. Belief in Commands

Novius Opiter worked from the roof of his home in Capernaum. Oversaw Rome's share of the wealth of Galilee. Fish and fish products. Caravans from east and west. Taxes. Armed escorts from his Century on the Roman roads. Engineers from his Century to maintain those roads.

Rome ran on bureaucracy. Novius was not a mighty Roman house. They were not Senators to sit about, but still old and respected. Opiter must do his duty as a Centurion of Rome. He must do his work.

He did not wish to be far from his Miletius , who lay under a thatched shade where the breeze coming off the sea was its most cool. Every physician that could be summoned from as far away as Jerusalem, and all Optier could do was make Miletius comfortable as the illness that had taken his ability to walk, took his life.

"You do not need to linger. I am not so near to death yet," said Miletius . He pushed himself up one elbow, sweat dampening his beautiful black curls into Gordian knots, and struggled to sip from his favorite cup, the copper one, which he'd always said reminded him of Opiter's eyes. 

Opiter was the master and Miletius the slave. He put aside work and held the cup to Miletius' lips. 

"You are too good to me," whispered Miletius .

"Miletius , what have I said about this?" said Opiter in a mock stern voice.

Miletius smiled weak and grey a smile as it was, "That you are as exactly as good as you mean to be, treating men based on their worth," Miletius tilted his head and with a touch of his old humor, said, "I must be like the grey beards then, old before my time, and rejoicing that you paid to have their synagogue rebuilt from Roman stone with Roman engineers."

Opiter kissed Miletius' brow. "A fisherman of compliments then. Like Capernaum you are a walless city."

"Raising no rebellion, and welcoming Roman intervention." Miletius raised his face and received his kiss. A soft almost chaste press of lips. All they had been able to do for some months.

Behind him someone coughed. Opiter sat up as slowly as his dignity would allow. It was Ananias, the head tax collector. Opiter cast a net in his memory, but couldn't recall summoning Ananias. He raised one eyebrow, which was sufficient to have the man babbling. 

"My lord, sir, Centurion Novius, hail Caesar and so forth, forgive this egregious and unsolicited interruption into your scene of domesticity, rising as it does above the others, and providing fair Capernaum with an example of,"

Opiter pursed his lips.

Annais, ever alert to the expressions of authority, said, "My Lord, Yesua of Nazareth has returned to town."

It was Opiter's duty to keep track of the various teachers that came and went from the desert and into towns along the sea of Galilee. It was not his duty to make a study of miraculous cures. A woman cured of fever, but she was the mother-in-law of one of this teacher's disciples. A paralytic healed, but he had been a childhood friend of another of this Yesua' followers. Dead men brought back to life, but that was the Jewish son of a widow. Opiter had spent some thought as to his best strategy.

He was a Centurion. Strategy had been a key part of his education.

Miletius coughed. "Opiter, please, I don't want to be lectured. Can't we just," but Opiter stopped his protests in the best way. With a kiss.

"Thank you for the news." Opiter herded Ananais from the roof. He had a soldier go and bring him Pharisees and other leaders of the town. He graciously met them outside the synagogue that he had paid to build. He spoke with them about a proposal for a sewer. Sighed, a time or ten, and when one of them hastened to ask what was the matter with the most powerful man in the region, he said, "It's my dear servant Miletius. His illness progresses."

There were polite nods, an attempt to bring the discussion back to sewers, but he put them off out of a need to be home.

Within hours there was word that Yesua was heading towards Opiter's home. When Miletius heard, he was beyond unhappy. "My Love, there will be riots if this teacher comes to our home to heal me. I am triply unclean to the people here, and I will make this teacher unclean in their eyes," Miletius took Opiter's hands. "Don't make me responsible for what will happen."

Opiter could no more have refused than he could have turned back the sun. He sent messengers to send Yesua from his door. Still, he could hope. He sent word of his own unworthiness to have the teacher in his home, and his hopes for Miletius' cure on Yesua's command. Opiter was a soldier. He believed in commands.

The messengers had not yet returned when Miletius sat up in bed. He put one leg, no longer withered with disuse onto the ground and then the other. He stood up, hale and glowing with health. 

While Opiter, he could do no more than embrace his love and rejoice.


	30. Anarchy

When the rubber raft grazed the sand of the beach beneath the sharp pines, Sidi jumped from it. Almost tripping on the dark fabric of her skirts in her haste to kiss the earth in thanks for surviving. Her husband, Hussein, was not far behind her. Their fingers clung to each other as they kissed the shifting sand.

They could have taken a message from that. All their money gone for the opportunity to be slapped by waves for days on a rubber raft with fifty others only to land below a cliff.

Sidi took a message. They had not drowned. She kissed the sand.

They climbed like goats. Sidi didn't know anything about goats. She'd grown up in a city: now gone to splinters. One of the others, who had kept goats, he muttered it as they made their way. 

They made their way. 

Only to find themselves in another camp. Living in another city of dust. Waiting for a place to live.

They were still waiting when they heard about the Anarchists. 

Hussein heard rumors. Riots. Tanks and police. Violent clashes. 

Sidi had heard rumors. Buildings abandoned in the debt crisis claimed for housing. Schools. Communities.

Sidi pulled Hussein's hand to rest on her flat belly. No future yet resting there. "We cannot remain here. This is not living."

They snuck out the camp in a truck. They had been told the way. Pass the shipping container covered in black banners. Stop at the mural of the refugees. Not like them. Like them. Greeks. Cypriots. People driven from their homes, almost a century before. 

A man with a toolbox took them to an abandoned school. Abandoned no more. Rooms filling with families. People brushing off the dust. A bustling market. The sounds of home melting with Greek voices.

Hussein asked the man working on the water main, "Is this legal?" 

Sidi looked at the bolts that had been cut to open the fence. "Will we get in trouble?

"If the government doesn't want people turning on water," He grunted as he put his back into it, "for buildings abandoned in debt then they should not," he pushed and the lever moved, "put the mains right next to the street." He looked up to the first window where a Greek girl was hanging out a first floor window. "Korina, give it a try."

She disappeared. Her whoop was all the answer they needed. 

Hussein helped the man to his feet. He was not a young man. At home, he'd have been surrounded by grandchildren. This was home now, Sidi supposed. 

"Anyway," he said when he was on his feet. "You were in trouble. Now you're in trouble with water you can drink." He picked up her tool box. "Now, we'll free the electricity."


End file.
